Retired school employees to meet

MARTINSBURG — The Berkeley County Association of Retired School Employees will meet at noon Feb. 19 at Hoss’s Steak and Seafood Restaurant, on Edwin Miller Boulevard. No reservation required. Guest speaker will be Barbara Gerwatosky from the Berkeley Senior and Health Services.

If school is canceled or if there is a two hour delay, the meeting is also canceled.

WMPA meeting will be held on Feb. 20

MARTINSBURG — The annual War Memorial Park Association meeting will be held at 4 p.m. Feb. 20 at the Administrative Office of the Berkeley 2000 Recreation Center, 273 Woodbury Ave. Meeting is open to the public. If you are interested in being a part of the Association, please plan to attend. Agenda items include the election of officers and results of the 2018 Labor Day Breakfast.

Contest to promote opioid awareness

CHARLESTON (AP) — The West Virginia attorney general’s office is sponsoring a contest among schoolchildren to promote awareness of prescription painkiller abuse.

Attorney General Patrick Morrisey says in a news release the “Kids Kick Opioids” contest in its third year is open to elementary and middle school students. It can include poems, drawings, letters or anything that promotes awareness of painkiller abuse.

Students can work individually or in groups. The winning entry will be used by Morrisey in a newspaper public service advertisement. Regional winners will be displayed at the state Capitol.

The deadline for entries is April 5. They can be mailed to the attorney general’s office at 1900 Kanawha Blvd. E. State Capitol Building 1, Room 26-E, Charleston, WV 25305, or sent by email to AGPSA.contest@wvago.gov.

West Virginia has the nation’s highest death rate involving drug overdoses.

Baltimore police ‘understaffed’

BALTIMORE (AP) — As Baltimore’s troubled police department awaits a new commissioner, its interim leader says the agency is “understaffed across the board.”

Gary Tuggle’s remarks come on the heels of data obtained by The Baltimore Sun showing the department has failed to fill around 500 vacancies, and suffered a net loss of 36 sworn officers. Mayor Catherine Pugh on Wednesday defended police recruiting efforts, saying the net loss represented an improvement.

But the newspaper reports Tuggle says police are struggling to catch up after years of underinvestment. Along with patrol understaffing, commanders say they don’t have enough detectives to investigate shootings, robberies and homicides.

Police will stop performing pre-employment background investigations for other city agencies for six months to focus on vetting police recruits. A new patrol schedule also launched this week.